Kit for Cat
Kit for Cat is a 1948 Looney Tunes short directed by Friz Freleng. Title * The title is a pun on the term 'tit for tat'. Plot Sylvester is in the trash alley trying to find food to eat. When a kitten comes by, Sylvester yells at the kitten, "Say, listen, small fry, I'm working this side of the street! Now scram! Go on, beat it! Get lost!" When a blizzard comes, Sylvester acts frozen and knocks on Elmer Fudd's door, begging for shelter, "Please, save a frost-bitten feline from a frozen fate!" Elmer Fudd tries to warm up Sylvester by putting him on his sitting chair near the fire and tells Sylvester to consider his home as his own now. When the same kitten comes acting half frozen, Elmer Fudd exclaims, "Dear me, two cats! I'd wike to have a cat awound the house alwight, but I can't keep both of ya..." Elmer says, "Hahahaha! Baby kittens are so cute!" Sylvester tries to act like a baby, but Fudd is disappointed by Sylvester's way of acting when he's grown-up, labelling it "a widicuwous way for a gwown-up cat to behave," and tells him to "act your age". Elmer decides "Well, maybe I'd better sweep on it and make up my mind in the morning", to Sylvester's chagrin. Sylvester then decides how to get rid of kitten, like thinking of hanging up the kitten, shooting him with revolver, or tying him up and leaving him in front of a train. Then Sylvester decides to frame the baby kitten by pouring all the milk in a milk bottle on him and then dropping the bottle. Elmer observes, "What's going on here? Did you do that? Aww, the poor wittle fewwa, you must be starved. How negwectful of me." and gives the kitten milk, cheese, hamburgers, pickled herring, smoked barracuda, salami, bologna and other foodstuffs never mentioned. Then Sylvester knocks his head on the wall in disappointment as each food item is mentioned. Sylvester then throws a ball of string to the baby kitten to play with, but the other end of the string is tied to the glasses and dishes. When the kitten plays with it, the glasses and dishes break. The kitten quickly tries to fix it all by gluing them back together, but Sylvester breaks every one he fixes. When Fudd sees Sylvester breaking his dishes, he says, "So, bweaking my dishes? You're making it vewy much easier for me to make up my mind which one of you to keep!" Sylvester then hypnotizes the kitten with a book of hypnosis to hit Elmer. He says, "The head. The head. On the head. Here, stupid, on the head." The kitten becomes mistaken, and hits Sylvester's head near Elmer's bed as Sylvester stupidly pointed at his own head when he ordered the kitten to hit Elmer's head, making Sylvester sleep with Fudd in the bed, and Elmer, waking to notice Sylvester in his bed, throws him back down the stairs. Sylvester is then warned by Elmer, "If I'm disturbed once more, I'm holding you wesponsible!" Sylvester then uses a mouse toy and the kitten chases it, getting inside a mouse hole. Sylvester locks up the mouse hole with wood and nails. The kitten, however, undoes all the portraits and things held by nails on the walls. Sylvester, remembering Elmer's warning, tries to catch all of them. The chandelier on top of Fudd's head crashes before Sylvester can fix it with a screwdriver, which angers Elmer so much, that he tells Sylvester, "That's the wast stwaw! I'm giving you just one more chance! If I hear just one more sound out of you, just one more peep, just so much as one tiny wittle peep, out you go!" Sylvester then spits at him before Elmer proclaims, "And that's my final warning!" Next, the kitten, overhearing Elmer's warning, does role-reversal and tries to make noise himself to try and frame Sylvester. He tries to shoot lots of rifle bullets though Sylvester puts some earmuffs on Elmer's ears beforehand (the kitten tries using the gun again later on), bangs on a parade drum, slams the door numerous times (at which point, Sylvester loses his patience with the kitten, and from that point chases the kitten to try and get rid of the kitten by force), turns on the radio (where "Melvin" and "Beatrice", puns on their voice actors' names, take turns trying to kill each other), activates the coin-operated piano, and is even chased by Sylvester. Eventually, all the noise crescendos, too loud for even the earmuffs on Elmer's head to block out thanks to a last-minute addition of Sylvester crashing into a metal bowl the kitten held up; he stops them and says that he has "made up his mind who's weaving these pwemises!", but not before Elmer's landlord serves him an eviction notice,"Oh no, you haven't, I've made up 'my' mind! Here!" Elmer, Sylvester, and the kitten now all look for food in the trash alley. Availability * (1980) LaserDisc - Sylvester and Tweety's Bad Ol' Putty Tat Blues (blue ribbon version) * (1990) VHS - Elmer Fudd (1990) (UK) (blue ribbon version) * (1996) VHS - Special Bumper Collection (Vol. 4) (UK) (blue ribbon version) * (???) VHS - Wideo Wabbit (UK + Europe only) (1998 dubbed version) * (1999) VHS - Looney Tunes: The Collectors Edition Volume 9: A Looney Life (blue ribbon version) * (2003) DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1, Disc 4 (1998 dubbed version) * (2003) DVD - Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volume 1, Disc 2 (1998 dubbed version) * (2017) Streaming - Boomerang App (1998 dubbed version) Censorship When this short aired on ABC, the whole scene of Sylvester hypnotizing the kitten to hit sleeping Fudd on the head with a baseball bat and being himself hit by said bat, awakening Elmer, who throws Sylvester out of his bedroom was removed. Also cut was Sylvester trying to plug a rifle with his finger. https://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-k-l.aspx Notes * Most of the cartoon's concept was recycled from the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Hare Force". * The radio soap opera characters "Melvin" and "Beatrice" are references to actors Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet who voiced them.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040514/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ql_1 * The background used for the opening titles is identical to that of "Back Alley Oproar". Coincidentally, both lost their original credits upon re-release and both cartoons had original titles eventually restored to them. * This was only one of five post-1948 WB cartoons to get a Blue Ribbon reissue prior to 1956 - with the original credits cut. The others were "Daffy Dilly", "The Foghorn Leghorn", "Scaredy Cat", and "You Were Never Duckier". "Kit for Cat" was the only one of these to originally be a Looney Tune (the rest were Merrie Melodies), and the only Friz Freleng-directed cartoon in the group ("The Foghorn Leghorn" was directed by Robert McKimson, the others by Chuck Jones). In addition, "The Foghorn Leghorn" and "Scaredy Cat" also had their original opening and credits restored for their 1998 dubbed versions. Both cartoons have their 1998 dubbed prints present on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1. * The release on Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1 and Looney Tunes Spotlight Collection Volume 1 still contain the 1955-1956 Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodie closing with the original ending music for unknown reasons. The audio is of a noticeably lower pitch, at least on the DVD releases. * While almost all prints have the 1955-56 Blue Ribbon ending Color Rings, a 1998 WB THIS VERSION print shown on television (usually outside the USA) and on the European VHS tape Wideo Wabbit has the original opening, credits, and ending rings restored. The newer 2003 restored version for unknown reasons, uses the 1955-1956 Blue Ribbon ending card. The 1998 dubbed print shown in the USA is likely to also have the same effect, hence it's the only dubbed version created by Warner Bros. to have a altered ending card. Gallery 51Xj8OIWO9L. SX342 .jpg|Lobby Card KitForCatLobbyCard2.jpg|2nd Lobby Card References External Links * "Kit for Cat" on the SFX Resource Category:Cartoons directed by Friz Freleng Category:Sylvester Cartoons Category:Elmer Fudd Cartoons Category:Shorts Category:Looney Tunes Shorts Category:1948 Category:Blue Ribbon reissues Category:Cartoons written by Tedd Pierce Category:Cartoons written by Michael Maltese Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling Category:Cartoons with layouts by Hawley Pratt Category:Cartoons with backgrounds by Paul Julian Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Arthur Q. Bryan Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Bea Benaderet Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons produced by Eddie Selzer Category:Cartoons animated by Pete Burness Category:Re-released cartoons whose original titles are known to exist